The Cold North Sea

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by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)


  ‘We found him on the run here, posing as a Pole,’ added the valet.

  Mordecai shrugged, feigning nonchalance.

  ‘You have heard of Jaunā Strāva, the “New Current”…?’ the rich man said.

  Did they know he was in the liberation movement?

  ‘No… I never heard…’

  His inquisitor sighed an exaggerated exhalation of disappointment. He shook his head.

  ‘Come come, Mr Plavinas. You can do better than that.’

  Mordecai shrugged again.

  ‘Then what if I told you, this man, the Okhrana… He was in Brigade 52?’

  The fat-necked man, in one clean movement, ripped off the victim’s left sleeve. He turned him round to face them. Mordecai saw the blue-black tattoo marking on the forearm: the double-headed eagle, the insignia of the Russian Secret Service; the Cyrillic script, ‘Oхра́на’.

  The rich man laughed.

  ‘The fool is even proud of it.’

  The wretch began to whimper again.

  ‘The torture and execution of New Current members and other so-called dissidents…? The rounding-up of Jews to be sent to Siberia…? You do not need reminding of the exploits of the Okhrana – in particular, Brigade 52 of the Okhrana. This fellow is so satisfied with his work, mere roubles are not enough. He’s wearing his allegiance as a badge of honour.’

  Challenge them, Mordecai. You have to…

  ‘How do I know that you are telling me the truth?’

  The rich man snapped, the first crack in the veneer – a loud guttural bark.

  ‘Part of your new remit is not to question that which you are told!’

  The shouting upset his dog. It yelped. He cooed, soothing it apologetically, as if comforting a baby.

  The distraction gave the Russian captive his opportunity. He shuffled across the warehouse as quickly as he could in a bid to escape, the chain around his ankles clanking along the way. But it was an agonising, pitiful spectacle. Pathetic.

  The big man strode not towards the man, but to the far wall. There were some implements hanging there, one of them a rusty gaff – a curved, sharp hook attached to a wooden handle, a device for hauling in a large fish.

  He marched back over, swung and casually plunged it into the escaping captive’s shoulder. The man shrieked in agony and collapsed, falling face first, his arms having been lashed together behind him. The big man took the handle of the gaff, embedded deep, and dragged him back across the floor, leaving a fresh smear of blood, most of it now oozing from the new savage wound.

  The valet nodded. The big freakish man let go of the tortured Russian and reached into his pocket. He produced another clip of bullets.

  ‘My gift to you, Mordecai,’ announced the rich man. ‘Your chance to avenge your people… Or, at the very least, put this lamentable creature out of his misery.’

  The poor wretch was grovelling now – agonised, whining, slobbering, begging…

  ‘Pozhalyusta… Pozhalyusta…’

  Mordecai stood firm.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No… Why?’

  ‘Because I cannot kill a man in cold blood.’

  The rich man sighed, disappointed again.

  ‘In our business, Mordecai, death, in its various unpleasant guises, is a mere occupational hazard… a bruised thumb to a carpenter… a paper cut to a clerk… Dispensing death is a task you performed with distinction when in uniform.’

  ‘That was different…’

  Mordecai could not look him in the eye.

  Said the man: ‘Then it is something I suggest you re-familiarise yourself with.’

  The valet gave a nod to the big brute. He yanked the snivelling captive up and put the Russian in a head lock underneath his left armpit. There followed the crunch of bone and cartilage as he twisted, wringing his neck like a chicken. He then elaborated with the most grotesque signature Mordecai had ever seen given to a casual act of violence. With a flourish, while the man’s last moans were still echoing, he wrenched the head around a full 180 degrees.

  He then stooped over the silent body, now on its front, placed his boot between the man’s shoulder blades for leverage and proceeded to twist, turn and pull at the head – like a troublesome cork in a wine bottle – till he had separated the spine, the ragged flesh and all but a few shreds of sinew and tendon.

  Mordecai’s guests did not bat an eyelid.

  Blood pumped like a geyser, clear spinal fluid dripped from the jagged shards of bone. Then, with one final two-handed heave, the big man yanked the head clean off. It landed with a soft thud and rolled across the floor – the dead eyes staring, the stricken tongue lolling between the sad, broken teeth. The big man clapped his hands together casually, no more inconvenienced than a gardener brushing off the dirt after uprooting some carrots.

  The rich man’s dog was giving some excited little yaps, his paws pedalling in the air. He set it down. It padded straight through the lake of blood and began licking at the stump of the neck, sucking on the open wound, gnawing on the meat, wagging its stubby tail.

  ‘From now on,’ said the rich man, ‘you will do exactly as we ask.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Something told Finch not to travel directly. He left at dawn, caught the first train into London and walked from St Pancras to Euston past the giant, palatial neo-Gothic Midland Grand Hotel. Lest he be followed, he hoped to give the impression of intended travel northwards (he had family in the Midlands). After queuing rather obviously in the ticket office of the London and North Western Railway, he ducked out of a side exit and took a circuitous route via public transport to Liverpool Street station.

  From Liverpool Street, Finch took the Great Eastern locomotive service to Norwich. While delayed at Ipswich, he used a telephone in one of the new public booths and frustrated the put-upon Daphne, who’d just arrived for work, with the news that he was unwell (he’d ‘picked up something’ from Mrs Ashby) and probably wouldn’t be in till Thursday.

  After Norwich came the East Norfolk Railway, a draughty, regular stopping service that groaned north, skirting the Broads waterlands on its way to the Victorian resort of Cromer, perched atop a steep escarpment with its pier nestling down below.

  At Cromer he boarded a train on the branch line that traced the coast westwards for the remaining few miles of his journey. The countryside, up on the clifftops, was flat and exposed. Rain lashed against the carriage window, like someone throwing gravel. Beyond, to his right, the North Sea was a foreboding slate-grey with white breakers kicking up.

  Unsure of what would be required of him on his mission, Finch had dressed in a worn tweed jacket with cap and knee-length corduroy knickerbockers. He wore a jumper over a checked shirt and knitted tie, thick woollen socks with walking boots, and carried his basic supplies for an overnight stay in a canvas rucksack. He lit himself the latest in a long line of cigarettes. And, when no one was looking, suckled on his hip flask.

  After delays from the earlier engineering works somewhere in Suffolk and a consequent missed connection, it was mid-afternoon by the time the train pulled into Endthorpe. The rain had stopped and a patch in the clouds yielded a brief burst of sunshine. A partial band of a rainbow revealed itself against the purple-grey backdrop. The reflected sunlight glared up from the wet pavement.

  Amid the engine’s hiss and a great belch of smoke, Finch exited the small station by the level crossing – the gates of which the signalman was opening by hand to let the traffic through – and wandered down the pleasant high street with its attractive flint-fronted buildings and new clock tower built over the public water pump. A smattering of locals mooched in and out of the shops: the greengrocer, a large ironmonger’s store, the tobacconist…

  It was clearly very quiet outside of holiday season. Finch walked past the evidence of busier seasonal times as he neared the seafront: the shuttered ice-cream parlour, a closed summer tea room and various boarded-up amusements. Soon he found himself leaning on the marine wall, h
ead cleared by the cold sweet sting of sea air.

  The clouds rolled back over again and he felt the temperature drop. He watched their great dark shadows move across the water and thought for a moment of the wild weather swings on the South African veld. Herring and black-headed gulls, the latter now in their winter plumage, just a black dot on the side of a white head, squawked and whirled.

  The beach had a steep bank of large grey pebbles with tidal shelves worn into it. A hundred-yard stretch of flat, compact sand lay beyond it to the water, the beach subdivided by a line of defensive wooden breakwaters that jutted straight out. But the grim, dark sea was fast coming in, its speed exaggerated by the flat sand.

  For a seaside resort, unusually, the sun was behind the town, over the land, the shore facing due north, nothing between it and the Arctic. Out there, studding the grey water, small single-masted crab boats bobbed between the coloured cork floats that marked the location of their pots.

  To Finch’s left, along the crumbling clifftop, above the promenade, were several impressive large modern hotels. They owed their living to the holiday trade that had sprung up with the advent of the railway, turning remote fishing villages such as this one into seaside resorts.

  To the right, beneath the gulls hovering on the breeze, was what he had come to find – the fishermen’s slope. A number of crab boats had been hauled up it or alongside it on the pebbles. There were stacked wicker pots and mounds of round cork floats all around; the sharp tang of crab hung in the air. There were wooden tubs with the creatures in, piled on top of each other, trying in vain to crawl up and out, unable to gain any purchase on the slippery smooth sides

  There was a handful of fishermen, some at work sewing up nets and patching up the weave in their pots, others tending to ropes, sails and oars, some just leaning back, smoking. To a man they were weather-beaten, dressed in oilskins and woollens, seemingly unbothered by the wind and cold. Several had thick beards.

  Finch watched for a while. There seemed an intrinsic nobility to these men – hard men… men of the sea… of nature. Their labours were punctuated by the odd burst of playful, indecipherable banter. Finch felt conspicuously soft, pink, childish… urban.

  To the side of the slope, the doors were open on a newly built shed. As if in testament to the perils of the fishermen’s trade, there sat a brand new lifeboat with its white-glossed hull and ropes for hand-holds looped around the dark-blue band below the gunwale.

  Finch jumped down over a wall, overtaxed his knee, and hobbled along. The slope was slick with seawater and seaweed slime and his cautious footing, along with his dress, singled him out immediately as an interloper.

  He approached a man in his twenties, clean-shaven but his face a reddish-brown, woolly blond hair matted with salt, at work with a knife on a rope, the stub of a hand-rolled cigarette clenched between his lips.

  On the assumption that news of the death would not have reached these parts yet, Finch bade him good day and enquired politely if he happened to know of a man named Sidney Pickersgill. He was an associate, he said, and he was looking for him. As had happened before – a constant failing, Finch admitted to himself – he wasn’t prepared for every eventuality.

  One thing he certainly hadn’t bargained for was that the name Pickersgill would be met with an outright look of hostility. His follow-up enquiry, that he understood Pickersgill to have been a colleague of the late Bertram Brandon, caused the man to call over his shoulder.

  ‘Tommy… Spud… Squinty…’

  Three men abandoned what they were doing, came up the slope and stood behind their friend in a not exactly friendly manner.

  ‘Pickersgill? Who want a-know?’ asked the shortest of the men, one of his eyes on a sharp inward cast towards his nose. His accent was so thick it took a few seconds to register.

  Finch didn’t play the ‘medical card’ or give his name but alluded to his credentials as someone in a position of standing. It was a professional call, he said. He needed to find Mr Pickersgill or speak to his associates. The first man flipped his cigarette in Finch’s direction. He turned his back and returned to his whittling. With a sign-off of black looks, the others wheeled about too. One of them muttered an expletive. Another nodded to someone at the top of the slope.

  Looming over them was a seafront pub. It was doing a brisk trade for the time of day. Finch went back up, entered it, took off his cap and ordered a pint. The place was warm and cosy. It had low beams, a fire and a lively atmosphere, full of loud and booming conversation. He stood at the bar and made some chit-chat with the barmaid, letting it be clear he’d just arrived in town, was an innocent abroad, and was there to tidy up some business affairs.

  The young woman was friendly, clearly proud of her town, and told him of a few things locally he might like to do. She made a joke about the miserable weather. Ice duly broken, Finch felt safe enough to drop Pickersgill’s name again. The smile fell swiftly from her lips and she moved on to another customer.

  Finch was shaking. It was absurd, he told himself. He’d been in the heat of battle, been shot at on several occasions, seen death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. He’d been tortured. He’d faced summary execution. He’d even killed a man with his own bare hands (technically speaking, his hobnail boots).

  But this…? Suddenly he was afraid of asking a few not-unreasonable questions of some locals. Maybe it was the delayed reaction – that after all that had happened in South Africa, he was once again ensnared in something much, much bigger than he’d bargained for and with the potential for bleak prospects the further he got in. He sipped the ale and let it hit the sweet spot behind the eyes, willing ‘the bliss’. It wouldn’t come.

  By the fireplace, in a partly partitioned section down a couple of flagstone steps, was a group of fishermen. They were talking, laughing loudly. One of them – an older, large man, with a thick grey beard, a round belly and a fisherman’s cap – held court, heartily regaling his pals with some loud, bawdy story in between puffs on a clay pipe. Whether he was or not… he gave the impression of being the one in charge.

  Finch bided his time, went over to the fire, ostensibly to warm himself, and, half-drunk pint and cigarette in hand, gradually ingratiated himself into the man’s audience, nodding and smiling along. When a pause presented itself and a round of drinks was ordered, Finch, as politely as he could, went into his routine about being a stranger in town. When one of the men enquired as to his business and he announced that he was seeking ‘a Mr Sidney Pickersgill’, the request met with the same grim silence.

  As if to underscore the point, the four fishermen from the slope had appeared through the door and were nodding to their colleagues, glowering in Finch’s direction. He had walked straight into the lion’s den… One of the men whispered in the ear of someone drinking at a nearby table. He and his friends – evidently not part of their gang – got up and left immediately, their ales unfinished.

  ‘This here gen’leman want a-know ’boot Pickersgill,’ announced the man with the belly to his mates. ‘Say he a friend o’his.’

  One of the others – a well-built man with bushy black eyebrows – pushed Finch hard with both hands on his shoulders.

  ‘What you want a-know ’boot Pickersgill, eh?’

  ‘Please, I was just—’

  Finch flew straight into the man with the belly, who shoved him straight back into somebody else.

  ‘Bloody Bible basher, do-gooder,’ he heard someone mutter.

  The barmaid suddenly appeared, at which point they stopped.

  ‘You forgot your change,’ she said, looking directly at Finch, and pressed some coins into his hand. Her look to the others was a plea to call off the bullying.

  ‘He’s now-a-gorn, see?’ she said.

  She took Finch by the arm and steered him up out of the bear pit and towards the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

  ‘He’ll help,’ she breathed and patted his hand.

  The fisherman wi
th the blond hair, the first one he’d spoken to, stood blocking the exit. She scowled at him.

  ‘Eddie?’

  He glared at her but relented and stepped aside. Finch had safe passage out of there.

  Outside, he hurried along the prom and ducked into the cubby hole of a public shelter. He hadn’t forgotten his change at all. Wrapped around the few pennies that had been pressed into his hand was a scrap of paper. On it the barmaid had written a name: ‘Nathan Cole’ and the address of a cottage in Blakeney.

  Finch checked his watch. The daylight was not only receding, but the leaden clouds were ominous. The wind had picked up and the tide was almost high. He felt a visceral boom as a wave hit the sea wall and sent a great explosion of water into the air. Spray smacked him, salty, cold and wet.

  For a moment he was back in that accursed sea cave at Cape Point, on the Cape of Good Hope, where he and Annie had nearly met their end. There followed another boom. He needed to get out of there.

  He headed up an incline, under the arch that led down to the seafront and went between the huge hotels on the esplanade and the well-kept borders that lined the road and roundabout, all being dug over for the winter. Back at the train station he got a cab and asked the driver where he might lodge for the night on the road to Blakeney. The cabbie knew of somewhere en route, a bed and breakfast.

  Half an hour later, as the horse ambled away from having deposited him, Finch found himself standing in the hallway of a smart, detached flint house set back off a bend in the coast road by a small, pretty church, which had been built into the ruins of an old priory.

  The house had a guestbook on a table, various mounted pictures of wild birds, a bookcase containing well-thumbed volumes on seemingly every conceivable matter ornithological, and a rather forlorn-looking stuffed curlew in a case mounted on the wall. The fireplace in the sitting room was pumping out some very welcome heat.

  A jolly grey-haired woman shut her excitable cocker spaniel in the kitchen, ushered Finch in and showed him upstairs to a cosy, if chintzy, room while simultaneously firing off information about mealtimes, local amenities and the coastal bus service. It was out of season, she said, and he was the only guest there tonight. They’d thought about closing for next winter. It was a lot of work. Though they did have some folks in last week.

 

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